What’s Innovative About Cryptocurrency and Hayek’s “Free Market Money”? — Some Understated Obstacles in the Race for Blockchain Patents

If we are going to be fair, the cryptocurrency idea dates back to almost forty years ago. In an article published in the Wall Street Journal on August 19, 1977, Friedrich Hayek — the economist and philosopher whose work on a theory of money earned him a Nobel Prize — anticipated that many different types […]

An Interview with James Williams and Michael Power: Putting Privacy and Data Protection Under the Lens

The course Comparative Law: Privacy and Data Protection is offered this coming term at Osgoode Law School. IP Osgoode interviewed the course co-professors, James Williams (Osgoode site, personal site) and Michael Power (Osgoode site, personal site) for their insight on the exciting contemporary debates in the field.

Free software and comparative evaluation in the Italian Public Administration

The re-posting of this analysis is part of a cross-posting collaboration with MediaLaws: Law and Policy of the Media in a Comparative Perspective. The age-old question on the use of free and open source software in the Italian Public Administration (PA) seems to be coming to an end. Last January the Agency for Digital Italy […]

Game of Thones - Piracy is Coming

TorrentFreak has reported that the first episode of HBO’s Game of Thrones season three broke historic download records, with more than a million as of April 1st, 2013. Canada ranked fourth internationally in terms of the highest number of TorrentFreak S3E1 downloads, representing 7.4% of total downloads at the time of reporting.

Oracle Fails to Predict Copyright Case Outcome Against Google

The copyright and patent dispute between Oracle and Google continues, however a partial verdict on the copyright side of the debate has been handed down.

Google’s API Motion To Dismiss Oracle’s Java Copyright Claims Is Defeated

Mark Bowman is a JD candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. Google’s attempt to dismiss via summary judgment copyright infringement accusations from Oracle against its Java-based Android operating system have failed, with one exception. In a judgment filled with veiled disdain for Google’s motion, the United States District Judge William Alsup found that the main subject matter […]

feminists@law: A New Open Access Journal of Feminist Legal Scholarship

feminists@law is a new, peer-reviewed, online, open access journal of feminist legal scholarship. All are invited to visit the website at http://journals.kent.ac.uk/index.php/feministsatlaw/index and to pass it on to your networks. The following is an edited version of feminists@law's announcement.

Jaron Lanier: the Father of Virtual Reality technology speaks at Canadian Music Week

Nathan Fan is a JD candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. At this year’s Canadian Music Week International Breakfast event, Jaron Lanier had a few moments to call upon his audience of fellow music industry top thinkers and executives to consider this question: “What happens when we stop shaping technology and it starts shaping us?” […]

Open Source Textbooks: History and Recent Developments

On May 6, 2009, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger launched an initiative to make available free digital textbooks for high school students.  California's Secretary of Education, Glen Thomas, was responsible for ensuring that digital resources were available for use in high school math and science classes this September.  According to Governor Schwarzenegger, California's budget crisis motivated […]

Google’s Open Source Strategy and the U.S. Patent Reform Act of 2009

Brian Prentice of the Gartner Blog Network raises an interesting possibility in his post about Google's long-term business strategy. He speculates that Google's advocacy for the Patent Reform Act of 2009 coupled with its support of the open-source movement may not be as altruistic as one might first be led to think. The proposed legislation outlines various standards for […]